That President Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois legislature to not support a bill to provide medical care for newborns who survived failed late-term abortions is one of the key reasons pro-life voters will never support him.

Now, Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack has uncovered new audio of Obama, as a state legislator in Illinois in 2003, defending his position. Obama essentially argues that there is no need for the law because he trusts abortion practitioners to provide medical care for the baby they unsuccessfully tried to kill in an abortion.

The transcript of the video McCormack unearthed follows:

OBAMA: I just want to be clear because I think this was the source of the objections of the Medical Society. As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child  however way you want to describe it  is now outside the mothers womb and the doctor continues to think that its nonviable but theres, lets say, movement or some indication that, in fact, theyre not just out limp and dead, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. Is that correct?

OBAMA: Let me just go to the bill, very quickly. Essentially, I think, as  as this emerged during debate and during committee, the only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made an assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, lets say for the purposes of the mothers health, is being  that  that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, or she made an error, and, in fact, that that physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical measures and practices that would be involved in saving that child. Now, if  if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I  I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects as well that doctors feel that they would be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations and that, essentially, adding a  an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion. Now, if thats the case  and and I know that some of us feel very strongly one way or another on that issue  thats fine, but I think its important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these children are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that theyre looked after. Thank you, Mr. President.

As an Illinois state senator, Obama was so supportive of late-term abortions, he resisted efforts to protect unborn children born alive after failed abortion procedures.

When Obama opposed a bill to stop infanticide as a member of the Illinois legislature, he said he did so because it reportedly contained language that would have contravened the Roe v. Wade decision. However, documents uncovered during the 2008 election show Obama has misrepresented his position.

Obama, as a member of the Illinois Senate, opposed a state version of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a measure that would make sure babies who survive abortions are given proper medical care.

It also protected babies who were aborted through a purposeful premature birth and left to die afterwards.

On the federal level, pro-abortion groups withdrew their opposition to the bill after a section was added making sure it did not affect the status of legal abortions in the United States. Ultimately, the bill was approved on a unanimous voice vote with even leading pro-abortion lawmakers like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry backing it.

When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his opponent criticized him for supporting infanticide by voting against the Illinois version of the bill. Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state bill because it lacked the neutrality clause found in the federal version.

As the Chicago Tribune reported on October 4, 2004, Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal.

During Obamas 2008 run for President, he repeated those claims.

Documents obtained by the National Right to Life Committee showed Obamas claim that he would have voted for the bill had it been Roe-neutral is a false argument.

According to the documents from the Illinois legislature, Obama, as the chairman of the Illinois state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting concerning neutrality language that was an exact duplicate of the clause in the federal bill.

During the March 2003 committee, Obama voted in support of adding the neutrality clause, but then led his colleagues on the panel in voting down the anti-infanticide bill on a 6-4 vote.

Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion, NRLC legislative director Douglas Johnson told LifeNews.com at the time.

Johnson said Obama did so even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion.

Obamas legislative actions in 2003  denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions  were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress, Johnson continued.

The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose, he concluded.

27 August, 12 (LifeSiteNews.com)  The fuzzy grayscale ultrasound images of the two unborn babies are practically identical. But the jarring question above the images makes everyone take a second look: Which of these two human beings was conceived in rape?

The viewer is compelled to say: I cant tell, they both look the same. And thats exactly the point.

Whether a baby is conceived in the terrible circumstance of rape or in the happy circumstance of a loving spousal embrace, the fact remains that both are human beings. Both, if given a chance, will flourish by being loved, and both will requite that love in due season.

But that is not the answer abortion advocates ever want anyone to give when discussing rape and abortion.

Since LifeSiteNews posted the image, created by Abolish Human Abortion, to its We Can End Abortion Facebook page last week, it has been shared 4774 times and received 4,344 likes and 526 comments. Many of those comments attack the very core of one of the commonest arguments used to justify abortion - namely that abortion is necessary in cases of rape.

Brittany recounted how her friend who was raped decided to keep the child, adding that her friend now has a beautiful 16-year-old daughter named Hope.

Nora mentioned that her best friend was the child of a rape adding that she is the neatest person I know, very caring and funny.

Yoana told about her friend who was raped at the age of 14. She was heartbroken, scared, and pregnant. She never thought about abortion. She said, a baby had the right to live. Even though it was hard, she had family and friends to support her. She took therapy classes. She became herself again after her child was born. Now her baby is 10 years of age. She has no hard feelings, nor does she wish that she had never had her daughter. She loves her.

These commenters hit upon the one truth that abortion advocates know they cannot argue against, namely that the baby conceived in rape is really no different from you or me.

A woman named Yas put it best: To be honest my daughter is the result of rape, but to me I look at her as a gift from God.

Isnt that the truth? Every child is a gift, no matter how he or she came to be. Every child has something special that they can give to the world, no matter who the childs father was.

A woman named Nicole was glad that someone convinced her mother to think of her as a gift, not merely as a product of rape to be dealt with by abortion.

I want to just take a minute and tell you my story, she wrote. I was the result of a rape, and because someone talked my biological mom into not aborting, I am alive and I now have a little bundle of joy of my own. And just so you know, if my daughter ever got raped, I would tell her that that baby is a miracle 

Men and women who were conceived in rape are the ones who see the huge flaw in the rape argument for abortion. They unflinchingly point out, Why should the innocent child conceived in rape receive the death penalty for the crime of the father? Some even suggest that the rapist should be the one punished in this way, not the unborn baby.

No one understands the flaw in the rape-abortion argument better than Rebecca Kiessling, who at 18 learned that she was conceived in a brutal rape by a serial rapist who held her mother at knife-point.

Please understand that whenever you identify yourself as being pro-choice, or whenever you make that exception for rape, she writes in her testimony, what that really translates into is you being able to stand before me, look me in the eye, and say to me, I think your mother should have been able to abort you.

Thats a pretty powerful statement, she says. I would never say anything like that to someone. I would never say to someone, If I had my way, youd be dead right now.

No  this is the ruthless reality of that position, and I can tell you that it hurts and its mean.

Research shows that in cases of sexual assault in which a child is conceived, the welfare of a mother and her child are never at odds. It turns out that what is good for the child is actually what is best for the mother. Numerous testimonies by raped women who have chosen life for their child, which have been collected by the Elliot Institute (http://afterabortion.org/), suggest that the raped womans loving affirmation for her child is the one thing that really brings her healing and restores her sense of self-worth.

One woman named Anna, after comparing the ultrasound images of the two unborn babies, commented how her own child conceived in rape affected her life.

I was raped when I was 13. The beautiful baby girl that God gave me from that has helped to heal me more than anything else on this planet could have. To that baby you are still a whole person. You are not broken or damaged. You are their everything! My baby girl is 17 now, and she is absolutely amazing! I cannot imagine life without her.

These commenters have hit upon a fundamental truth that transcends biological reality, namely that a baby in the womb, no matter how it got there, is a human being who deserves life. It matters not who the father is. Each unborn child, conceived in rape or not, is a unique and unrepeatable human life destined for greatness.

Julie Makimaa, who was conceived in rape and now works to defend the right to life of all children in the womb, said it best: It doesnt matter how I began. What matters is who I will become.

51 posted on 09/02/2012 10:46:46 AM PDT by wagglebee
("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)